


A Mother's Love

by popfly



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Gapfillerpalooza, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-28
Updated: 2005-02-28
Packaged: 2017-11-10 04:43:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popfly/pseuds/popfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gapfiller for season two, episode seven. Debbie struggles with Michael's revelation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mother's Love

The words out of Michael's mouth were like individual bombs dropping on her ear drums.

"Ben's positive."

Her heart constricted, skipped a beat and then thudded heavily in her chest. A cold heavy steel ball of fear dropped into her stomach, and her mouth went suddenly dry, her gum sticking between her cheek and her teeth. She held her mouth in what she hoped was a passable smile as she repeated Michael's words to herself. _Ben's positive, Ben's positive, Ben's positive ..._

She managed to ask if they needed anything else even with a tongue that felt like sandpaper before retreating to the kitchen, where she leaned back against a prep counter and covered her face with her shaking hands.

"Debbie." Phil abandoned the grill and came over to touch her shoulder. "Debbie?"

"I'm okay." She kept her face covered to muffle the trembling in her voice. She most certainly was not okay, but she had orders to deliver and three tables of boys who hadn't decided what they wanted to eat, not to mention six hours left in her shift. "I'm okay," she said again, stronger this time, and she lowered her hands to offer a weak smile to Phil. "Just a little tired, you know?"

"You gotta stop working those crazy hours," Phil lectured, wagging his spatula at her before going back to the burgers he was grilling. "Working a night shift and then picking up the morning shift the day after is just insanity, honey."

Deb smiled again and patted down her wig, smoothed her apron, and grabbed the plates that Phil handed over. "I'll be fine," she said, nodding as she made her way back out into the dining room. 

She wasn't fine. She spent the rest of her shift botching orders and snapping at the bus boy. No one was sad when her shift was over.

Except Debbie. Because when she went home she had plenty of time to sit and think. 

And think she did. Nothing could distract her. Not a Bette Davis marathon on AMC. Not a pint of Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby. Not baking or vacuuming or dusting. Fighting with Vic made things worse.

She woke up that night in a cold sweat from nightmares of Michael, her Michael, pale as a ghost in a paper hospital gown, tubes attached to every part of him she could see, the machines beeping and hissing and dripping. Michael a walking skeleton with an IV pole, living in the bathroom of his hospice room because he couldn't be away from the toilet for longer than a second. Michael's hollow, sunken eyes going straight through her like hot pokers.

She didn't care it was nice or even politically correct. She wasn't going through what she'd gone through Vic again, and especially not with her son. She had to get him to stop seeing Ben.

She had to protect him. That was a mother's job.


End file.
